1/06/2017

NATALIE CRESSMAN BAND WILL PERFORM AT NY KNICKS HALFTIME SHOW AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ON JAN 27

Natalie Cressman has announced that she will be releasing a new EP on March 3rd. The Traces EP brings together a live band with electronic elements. The combination of sounds leaves the album with a refreshingly danceable and indie-modern vibe.

In anticipation of The Traces EP release, Natalie will drop the first single 'Radio Silence' from the album on January 24th and it will be available online for purchase and streaming.

To kick off the year, Natalie and her band will perform at halftime during the New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on January 27th.

About 'Radio Silence' (From Natalie):

I wrote Radio Silence about the trials of being a female instrumentalist in the man's world that is the music business. I often feel a lot of frustration about being being pre-judged because I am a woman playing trombone. The discrimination shows itself in many ways: either by people under-estimating my abilities, or hiring me just because of my gender and looks, as the "token" girl in the band or part of a miniskirt-clad chick horn section, not because of what I can do musically.

I've been kicked out of backstage multiple times at a gig because the assumption has been made that there was no way that I was one of the performers, because the prevailing and sometimes subconscious assumption is that being a musician is a "man's job" if you're not a singer.

This song was about not really feeling "seen" or "heard" for who I really am and for what's really important, the music. And that one day people would come to regret their small-mindedness and prejudice. I think many women both in music and beyond encounter sexism at work in their day to day lives so I wanted to put these feelings into a song in the with the hope that it might contribute to better treatment of female musicians in the future.

Keep up to date on all the latest news and tour date info at nataliecressman.com

ABOUT NATALIE CRESSMAN:

Raised in an eclectic musical household, Natalie Cressman has only continued to diversify and expand her musical universe. Still in her early 20s, the trombonist/composer/vocalist has assimilated the full range of her sonic influences into a startlingly mature, strikingly original voice that melds the sophistication of modern jazz with captivating storytelling and intoxicating melodies reminiscent of indie rock’s most distinctive songwriters.

Cressman has spent much of the last seven years touring the jam band circuit with Phish’s Trey Anastasio, while also performing with jazz luminaries Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum. Those varied experiences are reflected on her gorgeous second release, Turn the Sea. Anastasio calls the album “a beacon of light in an increasingly cold and mechanized era of music. Natalie is standing on the precipice of an incredible life in music, and if this album is any indication of where she’s headed, then I’ll be listening every step of the way.”

Inspired in part by those bandleaders’ boundary-blurring approaches, Cressman's original music reveals a sound that’s utterly uncategorizable but instantly accessible, one that belies but is also a product of Cressman’s youth. “I want to make music that my own generation can respond to,” Cressman says. “I would really love for anyone to listen to my music and find something to relate to. ”

Cressman was raised in San Francisco by parents who guaranteed she would be constantly surrounded by music. Her mother, Sandy Cressman, is a jazz vocalist who immersed herself deeply into the traditions of Brazilian music; her father, Jeff Cressman, is a recording engineer, trombonist, and former member of Santana. Natalie quite naturally began studying trombone with her father, but set out to be a dancer rather than a musician. She was an aspiring ballet dancer until her junior year of high school, when an injury set her on a different path. Once she set her sights on a career in music, her parents provided not only role models but active assistance, helping to provide her with some of her earliest opportunities. “Seeing how inspired and passionate my parents were about what they were doing lit a fire in me once I decided to go for music,” Cressman recalls.

Her parents provided entrée to a number of enviable opportunities, but Cressman’s own prodigious gifts continued to merit her presence in any number of high-profile settings. She soon found herself playing salsa with Uruguayan percussionist Edgardo Cambon e Orquesta Candela, Latin Jazz with Pete Escovedo’s Latin Jazz Orchestra, world music with Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra, and globally-inspired avant-garde jazz with multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum, a family friend who became a key mentor. Cressman continues to work with Apfelbaum in his ensembles, The New York Hieroglyphics and Sparkler.

Cressman switched coasts in 2009 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, and the following year was enlisted by jam band pioneer Trey Anastasio for his touring band. “I first met Natalie when she was 18, and I was instantly floored by how melodically and naturally she played and sang,” Anastasio says. “Natalie is the rarest of musicians. Born into a musical family and raised in a home filled with the sounds of Brazilian music, jazz and Afro- Cuban rhythms, she is seeping with innate musicality. Musicality is in her DNA.”

Following her jazz-oriented debut, Unfolding, with the more song-based Turn the Sea was at least partially a result of her tenure with Anastasio, Cressman says. “Trey always wants to include the audience, but he doesn’t dumb down his music to do it.

It would be equally difficult to pinpoint Cressman’s music, and at the same time equally hard to resist its allure.

Turn the Sea ends with a remix of opening track, courtesy of the band’s bassist in his electronica- producer guise of JNTHN STEIN. Cressman's forthcoming release The Traces EP picks up where the previous album left off, continuing adventurous Cressman's foray into the pop and electronic world. The 5-track EP features a live band, yet heightened by electronic elements, expressing her distinct style this time through a different, and inherently modern lens.

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